Panel 1: The North Korean Nuclear Program: How Did We Get Here? What Does North Korea Want?

North Korea's emergence as a nuclear state poses dramatic new challenges to South Korea, the U.S., and the broader Asia-Pacific region. Please join us as experts from the U.S., South Korea, Japan, and China share their views on what has happened in North Korea in recent years and how the U.S. and its allies can best respond. The North's nuclear test on October 9th sent shock waves throughout the region, but its October 31st decision to resume the six-party talks over its nuclear program has encouraged a measure of hope.

North Korea has reportedly reaffirmed its pledge to give up nuclear weapons programs in exchange for energy supplies and security guarantees. What steps can be taken to achieve this? What, if anything, would it take for the North to denuclearize? What will be the consequences if it does not?

Sponsored by Asian Pacific Research Center, Stanford University, Business Executives for National Security, Japan Society of Northern California, USF Center for the Pacific Rim, World Affairs Council of Northern California.

Sang-Ki Chung

Consul General of South Korea to San Francisco
Mr. Sang-ki Chung, has spent most of his career in the Asian and Pacific region since he joined the Foreign Service of the Republic of Korea in 1977. During his domestic tenure of office, he served as the Director of Northeast Asian Affairs II (Chinese Affairs Division), Assistant Protocol Secretary to the President of the Republic of Korea, and Director-General of Asian and Pacific Affairs Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was the first Korean diplomat sent to China in 1990 to set up a South Korea representative office in China, and has received a presidential citation for his dedication to establish diplomatic relations between Korea and China in 1992. When he worked in the Presidential Office, he accompanied President Kim Dae-Jung to North Korea as a delegation of the Summit between Kim Dae-Jung and Kim Jong-il in June 2000. From January to February 2003, he visited the U.S. as an International Visitors Fellow, invited by the US State Department. An expert on Chinese and Japanese affairs, he speaks fluent Chinese and Japanese.

Dr. Siegfried Hecker

Emeritus Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory; Visiting Professor, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University

David Kang

Professor of Government, Dartmouth College

N. Bruce Pickering

N. Bruce Pickering has been the executive director of Asia Society's Northern California Center since 2003, with a background in government, non-profit organizations and academia.
Previously, he was director of public affairs and development at the graduate school of journalism and special assistant to the director of the Institute of East Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He also served as program director of the World Affairs Council (1997-1999) and executive director of the U.S. Japan 21st Century Project.
Earlier in his career, he served as a foreign service officer with the U.S. Department of State, specializing in Political and Arms Control issues (1981-1993), and was deputy political counsel on the U.S. delegation to the Conference on security and cooperation in Vienna during the collapse of the Soviet Union (1988-1992).
He serves as executive director of the California State Assembly International Relations Foundation Board.

My name is Bruce Pickering and I am the Director of this Asia Society Center which isone of 10 nationally and in Asia and for those of you who don't know Asia Society is aglobal organization dedicated to strengthening relationships and deepening understandingbetween and among the people, leaders and institutions of the United States and Asia. Wedo this through extensive programs in the fields of policy, culture, business and the artsand we are a membership organization so if you like what you see and would like to joinwe would welcome that. There is membership information at the table out in front andyou can check our website at www.asiasociety.org. This is a very timely program and weare excited about it. It would not have been possible without the support of a number ofindividuals and organizations whom I will mention right now.First and foremost among these, well not first and foremost, but among these are theKorea Foundation, (indiscernible) whose president (indiscernible) is here today and JapanAirlines represented by Mr. Yoshiaki Hata (ph) and Ms. Isling Tanaka (ph) and both ofthem are here today as well. And then I would also like to take a moment to thank ourimportant co-sponsors. Again I don't think we would have had the size of the audiencewho would have today if it hadn't been for their kind support and those institutions arethe Asia Foundation represented by EVP Barnett Baron, who is here with us today andthe Asia Foundation is providing the copies of the agreement hot of the press and you willhave those in a few minutes.Business executives for National Security is represented by its Director Peter Ohtaki whois also here today. The institute of East Asian Studies, is represented by T J Pempel he ishere today. The consulate general of Japan, Japan represented by Consulate GeneralYamanaka and Ms. Minori Yamamizo (ph) - and they are not here yet but they will behere today. The Japan Society of Northern California whose new president Dana Lewis ishere today, the National Committee on North Korea and I have a card that the ExecutiveDirector Ms. Lee is here today as well.The US Center for the Pacific Rim and the Center's Director Barbara Bundy has been astrong supporter of Asia Society over the past and she is here today. The WalterShorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center at Stanford University and our moderator forpanel number one Mr. Gi-Wook Shin is here today and he is the Director. And finally theWorld Affairs Council of Northern California who is represented by the Program DirectorCarla Thorson, she is here today, it's quite a list. As well I would like to thank the KoreanConsulate General for its kind assistance in this program, Consul General Sang-Ki Chungand Consul General Kim both of who have been hugely helpful to us.And then finally my last acknowledgement to thank you, to actually 2 finalacknowledgements. The first is the generous support of one of Asia Society's co-chairs ofthe board Mr. Chong-Moon Lee and Mr. Lee's generosity has enabled us to providescholarships for today's program to students from Stanford University, UC Berkeley,University of San Francisco and San Francisco State University and then the last, Ipromise, the last thank you on this is actually to out program Director Robert Bullockwho put this thing together, it's a stellar cast and it's a tribute to Roberts programming ability.Turning to the days program it's my great pleasure to introduce Consulate General ofKorea to San Francisco Mr. Sang-Ki Chung who is going to introduce Ambassador Lee.Before I turn the podium over to the Consulate General I would like to note that he hasbeen an important figure here in San Francisco since his arrival in 2005 and he has beenvery successful in his mission of strengthening business and cultural relationshipsbetween California and Korea. And with that I would like to turn the floor over toConsul General Chung.Thanks Bruce for your kind introductions, good morning ladies and gentlemen, thismorning I am very much honored to introduce our Ambassador His Excellency, Lee Taisik to all of you. Ambassador Lee is a Korean diplomat, after passing the high diplomaticservices exam and joining the Ministry in 1973 he served in various locations around theglobe including Liberia, the Philippines, Austria, Yugoslavia, and the EU among others.He was the Korean Ambassador to Israel until February 2002 and served as ambassadorto the United Kingdom until August 2004, he was appointed as ambassador toWashington in November 2005. Domestically he has also held several senior levelpositions such as Director-General of The International Trade Bureau, Deputy ForeignMinister and Vice Foreign Minister. He had the unique experience of serving as DeputyExecutive Director of The Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO),which was established after the first North Korean nuclear crisis.Ambassador Lee is a true expert on the North Korean nuclear issue. I think he has ledKorean delegations in various security negotiations and the consultations, particularly todeal with the North Korean nuclear issue. He was heavily involved in the policiesconcerning the six party talks. Ambassador Lee is a man of vision and devotion. He hasbeen a role model of our diplomats even when he was a young officer. Ambassador Leegraduated from Seoul National University and the School of Advanced Internationalstudies at the Johns Hopkins.First panel is nuclear is the North Korean Program, how did we get here and what didthe North Koreans want? And the moderator for this program is Dr. Gi-Wook Shin it wasjust my note that as we came in, I said to Dr. Shin, I said, you know, it's taken us a yearand a half to put this conference on, but our timing is great, don't you think? And he said,yes, for sure. How did you arrange it? Dr. Shin is the Director of the Shorenstein AsiaPacific Research Center at Stanford University. He is also the Founding Director ofStanford's Korean Studies Program and the Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institutefor International Studies at Stanford. When Dr. Shin is done and now and he hasintroduced the panelists they have made their comments, the bios are in the booklet. Sothere isn't much need for too much. We are going to have Q&A cards and if you couldput your questions on those cards, we will actually try and group them into accordingly,appropriately and then Dr. Shin will then moderate the discussion with the cards in hand.So with that, Dr. Shin, the floor is yours.Okay, thank you very much for a very kind introduction. It's a great honor for our centerto participate this important event in the city. As you know we don't come out to city veryoften, but it is such a great opportunity to see, you know, many familiar faces in theaudience. When you are talking about this conference last year frankly no one expected,that we would have such a great timing in talking about North Korea. I mean, still we aretrying to digest what happened overnight, but it is such a great pleasure to introducedistinguished panelists to you this morning. There are three people on the panelists.The first one Dr. Sig Hecker he is a well known physicist and he is the one actually whowent to see North Korean nuclear facility in Yongbyong few years ago and he also wentto South Korea last year with me. He just joined as Co-Director of the Center forInternational Security and Cooperation as the employee just downstairs, you know, onefloor down from our center. The next speaker will be Professor David Kang fromDartmouth College and third one Scott Snyder from Asia Foundation. I have to say that,you know, most of them were staying at our center last year. So it's great to see all of youback to this bay area, it's my great pleasure. So the theme for the panel is North Koreanuclear program, how did we get here? What does North Korea want? I might have to saythat we have to slightly change the title into what else does North Korea want to happen.So they will be speaking for like a 10 to 15 minutes and then we will put up our questions so.Thank you Professor Shin. Good morning ladies and gentlemen. The timing is both goodand bad. It is good from a standpoint that is good news for all of us. It's bad for those ofus who prepared our speech long time ago. Fortunately I don't fall in that category.Always leave it to the end and it paid off this time since I had to redo it. And now interms of the topic for today and that is how did we get here, what does North Korea want,what else? I will leave the "what else" to my two colleagues and instead in the spirit ofwhat happened in the last few days, what I will try to do since I have a technicalbackground, I will try to deal with what does North Korea have today, you know, what'sthe fuzz all about this and then what about the deal, how does it affect what North Koreahas and what the concerns are? So and I will I will do this is in shorthand formbecause of limited time that we have to make sure that you have a chance to ask the questionsSo so let me stress what North Korea has today is what we call the full nuclear fuelcycle and what that means it has the front-end capability of everything from uraniummines to mine the uranium and make fuel for the reactor, that's called the front-end of thecycle. In North Korea's case they have taken the approach of being able to then design areactor uses natural uranium so you don't need this enrichment that you have heard about.So they have complete front-end capabilities. They have a reactor and actually had in theplants a couple of more reactors that then will burn this uranium to make electricity heatand in this particular case the type of reactor that they chose what it really makes well isplutonium which then can become the fuel actually for additional energy or for nuclearweapons. However, to get the plutonium out you have to do the backend of the fuel cycleand that is to extract the plutonium from the burnt reactor or a spent reactor fuel as wecall it. That's a big deal technically and North Korea has developed the capabilities to doso. So when you hear about the reprocessing facility that's the part where you actuallyextract the plutonium from the spent fuel and then it could become usable for a nuclearweapon. So they have all of those capabilities. Let me put the reactor in perspective as Isaid it makes electricity or heat and plutonium it doesn't make a lot of electricity. Werefer to it as the five megawatt electric reactor. A South Korean reactor typical SouthKorean reactor is a 1000 mega-watts electric.So in other words what the North Korean reactor makes is 1.5 of one percent of theelectricity that one of South Korea's 20 nuclear reactors make. So from an electricitystandpoint it's almost revealed and from a heat standpoint it's almost revealed except myfirst visit to North Korea to Yongbyong was in January of 2004 and let me tell you thatheat it produced was not revealed in terms of the building you go into. So it is importantbut relatively speaking its its really not very much. They did have plans for two biggerreactors instead of this five megawatt they had plans for 50 and plans for 200 and both ofthem were well along in construction especially the 50 megawatt. Now in terms ofnuclear weapons capability this reactor that they currently have been running the fivemegawatt electric is capable of producing enough plutonium for roughly one bombsworth a year. And if you look back over the years a number of years that reactors actuallywas operating it's made probably six to eight bombs worth of plutonium.So again electricity not much from a bomb standpoint, you know substantial. And evenbefore the agreed framework, you know, it appears the North Koreans extracted enoughplutonium for maybe one or a little more than one bombs worth. But most of the majoradvances in terms of their plutonium the fuel for nuclear bomb has been since 2003, youknow, after the altercation in late 2002. And then of course North Korea October 9th oflast year also conducted a nuclear test and although that nuclear test you know, I wouldcall only partially successful and nevertheless they were able to demonstrate to make anuclear bomb.So now let's talk a bit about the deal itself and you know, what does it actuallyaccomplish even as little as we know about it and I just a few minutes ago got thestatement from Scott Snyder and the focus and the statement as far as the deal isconcerned is to shutdown and seal for purpose of eventual abandonment the Yongbyongnuclear facilities they say including the reprocessing facility.So that's the first step and so what does it do? Well, first of all what it will do is it willlimit the size of the nuclear arsenal and the amount of bomb fuel that North Korea is ableto make. Currently as I mentioned they have six to eight bombs worth we translate to40kgs to 50kgs of plutonium. Their current production capacity is about one bombs worthper year. However, what this deal does is stop finishing the 50 megawatt reactor whichwould have increased the one bombs per year to 10 bombs per year.My most recent visit last November I had been able to find out that they have haddifficulties with the finishing that 50 megawatt reactor and so my assessment was thatwas still a few years away but what the deal will do and hopefully actually in the detailsof the deal is to make sure to take that 50 megawatt reactor out of the picture all together.If that happens that's very good news because that would be a you know, step functionjump in North Korea's capability.The second thing the deal does it limits the sophistication of the arsenal. Right now it'smy assessment as I have just mentioned that they know how to make a bomb. It was mostlikely less than one kiloton for a comparison the Nagasaki plutonium bomb was 21kilotons but one kiloton in a big city is still an absolute catastrophe. Without additionalnuclear testing I do not believe that North Korea could have the confidence to mountwhatever they have in terms of a nuclear weapon on a missile. So they are really limitedto vary crew delivery techniques of van, the plane, a boat. Without additional nucleartesting in my opinion, no sophisticated weapon - the deal will not allow additionalnuclear testing so no improvement and sophistication of the weapon.Ambassador Lee mentioned the uranium enrichment program which was the source of thedisagreement in October 2002, this at least the first that won't necessarily stop anyuranium enrichment program that they may have because uranium enrichment has such asmall footprint. It would be very difficult to find a new place. However, just havinginspectors in Yongbyong having more people in North Korea will necessarily I thinkmake it more difficult and I also my own assessment was that this uranium enrichmentprogram whatever they have is really not an immediate threat.The nuclear weapons of course are not dealt with in the initial phase of this of this latestagreement. However, with the current arsenal I believe that the nuclear weapon threat iscontained particularly since the deterrent that we have for North Korea which is if theirnuclear weapon is used any place anywhere it will surely need massive retaliation andregime change that deterrent I believe works. However, one has to deal with what I haveall alone considered to be the biggest threat of the North Korean Nuclear Program andthat's the potential of the export not of the nuclear weapon because quite frankly youdon't just take a nuclear weapon out of the country but of the nuclear fuel the plutonium itself.And I have a paper coming out in the March issue of arms control today which deals withwhat I think is the most likely and the most dangerous potential problem with plutoniumexport and that is a deal between North Korea and the Iran. Let's say a long alliance ofthe missile deal that they have had for many years. You can ask well, what does the Iranhave? Iran has money and it has oil. What does the Iran want? It wants some material, itsbeen trying for 20 years to enrich uranium overnight if it buys 10kgs to 20kgs ofplutonium from North Korea it catapulted into nuclear weapons capability overnightinstead of 20 years. What else does Iran possibly want if indeed they are pursuing anuclear weapons program? All of the capabilities that North Korea has I told you it hasfront-end capability that they know how to do everything associated with uranium. Theyknow reactor operations and then they have backend capabilities and even though its notadvertised much today Iran not only has a uranium enrichment program which they say isfor civilian purposes it is also building a reactor bigger than the one we were worriedabout in Yongbyong. Rather quietly of course everyone knows about it but hardly anyonespeaks but that reactor will make plutonium. North Korea knows how to extract plutonium.So the potential of technical collaboration either the plutonium itself nuclear weaponsexpertise or nuclear fuel cycle expertise or technologies between North Korea and Iran isthe deadly sort of deal that is most important to avoid. So I asked the question will thisdeal help in this respect. In my own sense even though this first step is a small step, it willhelp, because from the standpoint of North Korea needing energy and money, this dealprovides some of that energy which might lessen the need for any Iran deal. Also againjust greater visibility, more people in North Korea, I think, will help in a significant way.So let me wrap it up by saying that from my standpoint what the deal does even though itdoesn't specifically touch right now on the fate of the nuclear weapons or plutonium, butthat's included in the September 19th statement. But what it does right now it haltsadditional plutonium production, it hasn't declared, it sort of shuts down the facilities andall of that to me I would agree with Ambassador Lee is a pleasant surprise and a step inthe right direction, it opens the door and we should walk through that door verydeliberately and the details of what happens will be very important and quiet frankly asmuch as I admire the diplomats, occasionally they do needs some technical advice in howone stages this and, for example, to me shutting down the reprocessing facility before onedeals with whatever is left in the reactor is the wrong thing to do. I would leave thereprocessing facility open, reprocess the plutonium under IAEA inspection, because theplutonium is much easy to take care of than 8000 spent fuel rods and the magnesiumalloy clouding that corrodes easily that will cause us enormous amount of money to getout of North Korea.Simple things like this where the technical world and the diplomatic world must talk toeach other. In addition the other thing that's very important in terms of looking at how toimplement this deal, from a verification standpoint our lesson over the years in workingwith countries that have actually rolled back their nuclear program, that the only one thatwe know that had nuclear weapons that rolled it back is South Africa. What we havelearnt from all those years that unless you have the cooperation of the host country youcannot verify. And the reason for that I already mentioned uranium enrichment, thefingerprint, the footprint's too small. It's too difficult to find all the various places.If you are talking about plutonium, you know, as much as people are scared of plutonium,a few kilograms in a briefcase somewhere, in somebody's cupboard or somebody's cavesome place you will never ever find it and so it will take North Korean cooperation withthe records of operation of the reactor allowing us to go in, make some measurements onthe reactor, have their complete cooperation in order to be able to verify that there reallyis denuclearization. And so the path to its final resolution should be taken in such a waythat it brings North Korea and it has the incentives for them to actually declare, fullydeclare with their cooperation then we have a chance to verify with that verification thenyou are on hopefully where we will be here in a few years time to say everythingassociated with this deal has been successful. And so thank you for listening thismorning. I hope I gave you some background and I was able up to tee up my colleagues totell you how to really solve this problem.Okay, thanks Sig. Scott.As we were preparing for this panel we sort of came to an agreement that Sig would layout the technical aspects of the program and what David and I had talked about waspossibly trying to get into the heads of Chris Hill and Kim Gye-gwan respectively andsort of figure out what their thinking as they were on the plane coming back and of coursethey are not on the plane yet we don't think so in a technical sense our plans have beenfoiled, but what I want to do is is to try to at least lay out some issues that I imagineChris Hill is doing a lot of briefing right now, but I am sure that in the back of his headthere are also some issues and things that he is concerned about or challenges yet to bedone that he is going to have to face and so I will talk about those and David will talkabout maybe the North Korean perspective on this agreement.Clearly the first challenge for Ambassador Hill is that he has got to sell the agreementthat he made with the North Koreans. And it is not uncommon for those who havenegotiated with North Korea to say that it's actually easier to negotiate with the NorthKoreans than to sell the agreement that they have made when they come back, and in factwe already see that Ambassador Hill in many respects is just sort of caught in thecrossfire. I think John Bolton has already given his preemptive description of what hethinks about the agreement. Ambassador Lee gave slightly a different perspective whydidn't this happen several years ago, although it wasn't a criticism. It was more anindication that possibly we could have moved faster. So he has got to deal with that.He also has to deal with the situation where there has been an agreement about someinitial steps that will be taken to be implemented, but in order for this process to work ithas to keep moving. This process that is laid out in this statement, I think, is very muchlike trying to begin to ride a bike and so, I think, that he is probably going to be veryfocused on trying to move forward in terms of reconvening these parties for the bilateralgroups trying to keep all the parties engaged and moving forward in an implementationprocess, because if that starts to slow or break down it actually puts what has been agreedto and is expected to happen at risk.I think a third thing that Ambassador Hill is probably going to be thinking a lot about isthe question of whether or not the North Koreans might start to doubt a strategic decisionthat they have made, that he thinks that they have made that is implicit in the agreementand that I think that he believes might have occurred in the context of the Berlin talksperhaps. And again this is my imagination, I don't know what he actually believes, but, infact, in order to get to this point and in order to get to Berlin, I think both United Statesand North Korea made some kinds of strategic decisions about the nature and future ofthe relationship and then the question is whether or not an implementation they are going to stick to them.And so that involves implementation. Will the North Koreans actually address the issueof enriched uranium, it's already come up. It is our point, how do you get to the pointwhen maybe fuel would leave North Korea. Is this process going to be conducted in waythat is truly irreversible? We see the language of this joint statement, it talks aboutdisabling. But it sounds like we don't know yet, exactly and they may not know yetexactly what form that it is going to take. I think another area where Ambassador Hill isprobably a little bit concerned is, will North Korea actually move forward in an effectiveway in the bilateral normalization process with Japan? And the talks in Beijing, this time,I believe that finally the North Koreans and the Japanese met bilaterally one time, butthere is a lot of other activity among the other parties and that so there is really a long wayto go and he is probably also concerned about the Japanese reaction to this agreement inthe context of the impact on the U.S.-Japan relationship to a certain extent.Then, of course, he has to be concerned about how a normalization process with theNorth Koreans is going to be seen in a political context here, because this agreement andthe joint statement suggests that the nuclear - dealing with the nuclear issue is key, is tiedto normalization, but it doesn't really say much about other issues, missiles, humanrights, other issues that have at various times in the past been tied to the question ofwhether or not to normalized relations with North Korea.And I think another issue that he is probably thinking about is this question of burdensharing in terms of energy provision that apparently held up some of the discussions inBeijing and slowed things down. What form of burden sharing is going to be necessary inorder to fulfill the second stage in particular the 950000 tons of heavy fuel oil that isexpected to be delivered at a later stage in the context of North Korea's disabling of thereactor. We don't know yet whether this kind of burden sharing may involve U.S.financial obligations or not that. That hasn't been made clear to my knowledge.And then of course the Japanese also have indicated that and unless the abduction issue isdealt with in some form, it is going to be impossible for them to contribute. Another issuethat will be worked out and, I think, in these bilateral groups or not bilateral they areworking groups in Beijing; especially the denuclearization working group is going to beissues of sequencing in terms of who exactly does what first. There is some veryinteresting language in this statement about the period of the initial actions phase and thenext phase and its relationship to when North Korea gets some of the energy provisionthat is mentioned. And I think that the joint statement envisioned simultaneity but therealso is a dynamic in which sometimes one side appears to the initiator and the other sideappears to be the responder. And so those issues are all issues that could be potentialpoints where something might breakdown and he has to manage that.And I think the final issue that I see that he probably has to spend some time worryingabout is the question of as the pressure on North Korea is eased will the partners in thisprocess be willing to continue to move forward and not be complacent about this issue ofactually achieving denuclearization on the Korean peninsula and I think that in particularthis means are China or South Korea or other, you know, would they in particular besatisfied to know that the immediate crisis that everybody has taken a step back or andtherefore sort of eased the pressure on North Korea sufficiently that, maybe the northfeels that they don't need to take a next step towards denuclearization. Yes, the UNSecurity resolutions remain out there and their specific language in those resolutions thatindicates that the sanctions would be in effect until North Korea's denuclearization isfully achieved but in terms of what form that takes, how its implemented, I imagine thatin Seoul, at least, there is probably more people breathing sighs of relief and thinkingokay well, this is sort of under control now than people who are wondering, well how canwe make sure that North Korea gets to the end of the process and so that's what I thinkmaybe ambassador Hill has to contemplate as he prepares for his ride back to Washington.Okay, thank you. Okay once again we will be collecting questions after the presentationby speakers, so please write down your question and pass to, I guess, some staff of AsiaSociety. So last Speaker is David Kang.All right, thank you Gi-Wook. First thanks to Bob Bullock and Bruce for inviting me andorganizing this. Its been great to be a part of it. I also am in the unenviable position oftrying to get in the North Korean head and say what they are really thinking. So I shouldstart off by saying I have no idea, number one. This is all speculation, but I think that itsworthwhile trying to do this because, you know, one of the things I think we often forgetis that the North Koreans don't trust America any more than we trust them.You know, so its very easy from a US perspective, even like this morning on the whatour NPR they say well, North Korea broke the treaty in 94' et cetera, et cetera right. TheNorth Koreans don't trust anymore than we trust them and much of the actions that havegone on over the last couple of years have only reinforced their mistrust of the UnitedStates. So I am going to try and lay out what I see as some of the North Korean concernsand issues that they see coming up and I will try and be as brief as possible.One of the first things I would say is that, you know, in a way it's not a surprise that weare at this stage and we ended it with an agreement like this because this is basically, eversince 94', this is basically the form that any type of nuclear agreement is going to have totake. Something roughly along the lines of North Korea gives up its nuclear weaponsprogram, we provide the United States et cetera normalization of ties, a peace treaty etcetera. I mean that's been the basic nugget of any negotiated agreement. And you can callit different things and I think ambassador Hill is trying very hard not to call it agreedframework two. But that's essentially what its going to be, if you are going to get anegotiated agreement its going to be something like this.So from the North Korean perspective, I think one of the reasons they came back is thateverybody, you know all sides really wanted to get at least some type of progress, sometype of forward motion, even if its not anywhere near a full time of conclusive,conclusive deal and I think in the North Koreans they saw that this was the kinds of stepsthey could take. And in fact these are the same things that everybody agreed on two yearsago in September 19 and were basically the '94 agreement. So why are we, sort of get toSeptember 19 and then all of a sudden end up 2 years later basically there at square two Iguess. Is because of some of the things that, again, from a North Korean perspectiveraised their fears that the United States wasn't serious and I think their basic concern,their underlying concern is that the US isn't serious about implementing any of their side of the deal.We are very concerned that North Korea is not going to live up to it. Now I willconclude with some discussion about that. But I think that when, for example, when welook at Banco Delta Asia or what I found very interesting was the sort of lack ofdiscussion of the light water reactor in in the current text. Those two, to the UnitedStates, these are things that are either clearly separate issues or clearly derived from NorthKorean bad behavior. You broke the agreed framework therefore you don't get the lightwater reactor. However, if I am Kim Gye-gwan or Kim Jong-il, right, this is precisely theopposite lesson they take. Light water reactor matters North Korea so much becausethat's what the United States or the other side didn't do in '94. That was years behind, sothey view it they viewed it as proof that the US was serious about implementing it.And I think they were willing to give up on talking about it here but I certainly think thatBDA was one of those that they said, Okay, we just in September 2005, we just signedthis agreement and then you slapped this thing on us. You are not serious, you have nointention. And we said, we meaning sort of America, whatever, those are separate, that'sthe treasury department. But, if I am Kim Gye-gwan that's not a very convincingargument. Its shows that, okay, we are not very serious about it, so I think that in manyways that the North Koreans are probably as waiting for the US to back off on thisagreement as we are looking for every sign that they are not going to, they are not goingto follow up. Probably another longer term, what is, is the US really have any intention ofnormalizing ties and, and actually come into a modus vivendi with us.Scot laid out some of the real problems that Chris Hill is already running into. There are alot of people in America who, for justifiable reasons, would find it extremely abhorrent tosay to a North Korean country regime, okay live and let live. And, I think, the NorthKoreans are highly skeptical that we are really going to go down the process ofnormalizing ties, et cetera of of implementing a peace treaty. Those kinds of things, right.You know you can also see this potentially in sort of the the free trade agreementdiscussions between the South Korea and the US where Kaesong is a big deal, whereSouth-North ties are a big deal on whether the US will go along with a free tradeagreement. You know my guess is that that the North is also fairly concerned, its goingto watch US behavior on this type of negotiations as to whether the US is serious or not.You know so I again I am not at all trying to defend North Korean behavior. I just wantto make that very completely clear. But if I put myself in, you know, the position of aPyongyang diplomat there are certainly a number of things that I would be very, veryskeptical about US intentions or whether they will actually follow through and I wouldstill have gone down the path of this accord because its basically the same type of anaccord that ultimately has to happen. And the North, I am pretty sure knows that withoutsome resolution of a nuclear issue none of this other stuff is going to happen and theyprobably know that.As Scot said as well, the issues of sequencing and implementation are going to be farmore important than the basic outlines because again, what we tend to say on the US sideis, okay we will do this agreement but you do have to first and allay our fears. And I thinkthe North Koreans would prefer to see it the other way, like okay, we don't trust you, youallay our fears, and I think we are going to have some serious problems over sequencingthe series of moves, the sort of tit for tat process.You know one of the problems of course is the tit for tat process works very well if youwant to have relations go down, because you will start yelling at each other and doing badbehaviors. It's very hard to get that tit for tat process to build up trust. You know, so Iwill conclude this very briefly by the question that, you know, everybody always asksand, you know, just yesterday some of us talked to some reporter and the questioneverybody wants to know, will Kim Jong-il really give up his nuclear weapons. Youknow, I have no idea. I have no idea at the end of this, would North Korea truly say allright, there is enough here, we will dismantle totally. Here is all our bombs et cetera, etcetera. But I don't have an answer to that question. I am fairly sure, I do have a partialanswer though which is that the only possible way that we are going to find out is anagreement like this and this under coercion I think that there is no way that you wouldgive them up. So we are moving forward on that ambiguous note.